


light up your wildest dreams

by polyside



Series: drift compatible as fuck [4]
Category: Polygon/McElroy Vlogs & Podcasts RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - Pacific Rim Fusion, F/F, F/M, M/M, Not Beta Read, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-21
Updated: 2019-11-21
Packaged: 2021-02-16 11:54:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,937
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21507514
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/polyside/pseuds/polyside
Summary: Clay’s the one who points out Patrick, the boy who could almost be your twin brother, and before you’re even done being assigned housing the three of you are an inseparable trio. Once classes begin you meet Clint McElroy’s youngest son, and at first you’re worried he’s going to take away your friends and you try to ignore him, hold your head away, but he’s funny and kind and just wants to help so you let Griffin in your your heart, too.
Relationships: Brian David Gilbert/Patrick Gill, Patrick Gill/Simone de Rochefort, Simone de Rochefort/Jenna Stoeber
Series: drift compatible as fuck [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1535681
Comments: 3
Kudos: 21





	light up your wildest dreams

**Author's Note:**

> This world keeps expanding and really I'm just letting the characters drive it at this point. I think this is the last of the big POV life stories, though - if I play any more in this universe it'll be in life slices. I never really intended to do POVs beyond these three (Griffin surprised me), so this is the last of the planned ones. I do want to play in this space more, so if there's a story barely mentioned you want to hear in detail, let me know!
> 
> As always, if you are or know anyone in the tags, please turn around otherwise this could get awkward.

All your memories, the solid ones, that you know are real and not just fragments of dreams or imagination that you once thought true but your actual memories, begin at the Academy. You had parents, sure, but the first adult to teach you anything that matters is Clint McElroy. You were educated, socialized, appropriately cared for, but the first friend you ever make is Clayton Ashley. You don’t remember the times that don’t matter and you can’t say you regret their loss. You grew from a child into a young adult, but it’s at the Academy that you begin to grow up.

Clayton’s the first person you meet in your age group. He’s quiet, but you express how excited you are about training to be a ranger and his smile lights up his whole face as he agrees and just like that, you’re friends for life. Clay’s the one who points out Patrick, the boy who could almost be your twin brother, and before you’re even done being assigned housing the three of you are an inseparable trio. Once classes begin you meet Clint McElroy’s youngest son, and at first you’re worried he’s going to take away your friends and you try to ignore him, hold your head away, but he’s funny and kind and just wants to help so you let Griffin in your your heart, too. Over time, over the course of school and meals, over training and troublemaking, your trio becomes a perfectly balanced foursome. 

As youths you leave the Academy sometimes, to go on trips, see the world, learn more about the people you’ve already sworn to protect. It’s on one of these trips that Clint finds you, fingers delicately pressed to a glass display case, and asks you for the first time if you’d ever consider becoming a trainer instead of a pilot. At the time you laugh, it being in the nature of all teenagers to think they’ll grow up to be rockstars, but as you age the idea sticks with you, as you notice that while many of your classmates are women all your instructors are men. That trip becomes significant in your memory for another moment, too, the night you and Patrick sneak out to the ocean and under the stars he kisses you for the first time. His lips are soft and his face is scratchy but you find that you love kissing, like, a lot, and when you wander back inside together before the sun rises, holding hands and smiling, you think this is what love feels like.

Kissing is just the beginning but Pat’s there with you for it, hanging out in each other’s dorms while you learn together what it takes to make a person feel good. It’s not just Pat for you, of course, and you know it’s not just you for Pat either because he tells you about it, whispers down from his bed to you on the floor one night that he kissed Clay, that he thinks about kissing Griffin, that he’s confused by everything and isn’t sure what he wants. You curl up in bed with him and let Pat hold you as he talks but for all that you think you manage to allay his fears with the normalcy of bisexuality that’s the last time for whatever you had, because you’re finally old enough to be considered recruits and there’s no more time for discovery, only for training. 

Griffin doesn’t go to recruit training (he’s already been piloting with his brothers for years, there are perks to being a legacy) so it’s just the three of you again. Clayton turns out to be a natural, Pat too, but you work for it and struggle your whole way through combat and psych and med even once your best friends are already out in the world drifting with Griffin and with each other. Every day you show up to spar, to pilot, to try, to be the ranger the four of you planned to be as teens because there’s no way you’d give up on this, and at night you scream and cry and wonder if maybe it is time to give up. This, too, is what love feels like, your desire and heartache consuming you every morning to the point that the day you finally make the stupid giant robot move you break down sobbing in relief and Clay needs to carry you back to your dorm. He doesn’t let you kiss him, and for that you’ll always be grateful, but in your heart-drunk state you certainly try your best until he tells you, before anyone else, about his new drift partner and you’re so fucking happy for him that you almost break down again. The next morning, though, you go to Clint’s office and ask him what he meant, all those years ago, and he smiles.

You tell your friends about it over dinner. It’s an evening of announcements, too, because Clay didn’t tell you everything, didn’t tell you that because he found his partner and they need him out there, he’s being graduated and also reassigned, they leave next week. They aren’t going too far but any distance from your best friend is enough when you still have to finish your ranger training before you can move on, and to make matters worse, Patrick and Griffin are leaving for a while on a mission. You’ll be all alone and you can’t remember the last time you were alone. You manage somehow, though. A new batch of recruits comes on and you make fast friends with the new girls, Allegra and Susana, their friends Thomas and Jeff. Pat and Griff come home and the moment you introduce Pat to Allegra you know there’s something there, something special. It’s only a matter of time before circumstance tests them and when it does, you turn out to be right, of course. They’re a perfect match (sometimes you wonder if they’re a perfect match in other ways but you have some bare minimum level of decorum, you don’t ask) and watching them practice together is the coolest thing you’ve ever seen - Pat and Legs are the definition of the rockstar pilots you dreamed of being as a child and if it couldn’t be you at least it’s Patrick.

Pat and Legs are away on a mission and you finally start your teacher’s training when Clint McElroy appears in your doorway with a look of anxiety you’ve never seen on his face in your entire life at the Academy and you scream, you don’t know who or what but you just know. It turns out to be Clayton. You’ve never run as fast in your life as you do to the infirmary, stopping short when you see Griffin sitting there too, holding one of Clay’s hands and looking somber. You easily take up the chair on the other side, your best friend’s other hand, and there you both sit for days on end. You were never the closest with Griffin but this period of time tests and tries you both and you come out the other side closer than ever - you can’t continue to not call someone your best friend after you’ve fallen asleep sobbing together for multiple days in a row. You only leave to go meet with Clint, to go to the occasional class because you have to, because you’ll scream forever if all you think about is Clayton’s death-pale face on the infirmary cot. It’s a quiet morning when he wakes up, stirring so slightly that you and Griff wonder if you imagined it, call Sydnee to check and by the time she arrives Clayton is blinking his eyes open and you and Griffin are screaming, dancing around the room and full of joy (this is a love so deep you don’t wonder, it just is), so of course she kicks you out.

It’s a good opportunity, you say, to start putting some of what you’ve been learning about teaching to work. Clay needs help learning to speak, to move, to exist in the living space again and isn’t learning to move your body in a specific way exactly what recruits are doing too? Clint and Sydnee agree so you get a specially allotted time on your schedule every day to sit and work with Clayton, and if Griff happens to show up more often than not who are you to kick out the headmaster’s son? Slowly, steadily, you get to help (you don’t really think you contribute that much but are grateful they let you feel like you do) Clayton move around again and he’s fully speaking and fully moving by the time Pat and Legs come to see him and you get to have dinner in the mess just the four of you, again, like it used to be, for a little while. 

Clay joins you, now, training to train, and before long they give you both new quarters and a trio of kids to mentor. They arrive together, Brian and Laura and Jonah, not like you and Clay and Pat who found each other as you needed but you manage to project yourself onto them anyway. You don’t think you’re a very good mentor to them, not really, but you find kindred spirits in Jonah who loves music like you love fiction, in the protective eldest Laura, and in the smiling wild Brian who gets away with everything. Griffin joins you to teach the recruits in classes, works with Clay for sparring and movement, and you and Clayton try your best to be as much their friends as teachers can be. You also start making friends now that you’re a real graduate with real instructor’s quarters - you’ve always been social but by day you teach and train, by night you drink and game, and things move on. You meet a fair number of men and women but nobody sticks, and you visit Clay or Griff in the training rooms every now and again because both of them still think there’s a partner out there for you (there isn’t). Kids graduate, including your mentees, and you say goodbye to Brian and Laura one cold morning before they’re shipped off to the Dome. You invite the left-behind but fully graduated Jonah to your game night for the first time that night; he brings a guitar and just like that, your relationship changes. Jonah’s your friend now, joining Jeff and Susana and Rachel, all three brothers and Sydnee, Clayton and Ashley and Russ and more in the rotating cast of friends and family who make it worth getting up in the morning every day even when you’re tired and just want to sleep the winter away.

Three things happen in succession over those months as winter turns to spring to winter again. First, Commander Tara Long comes to the Academy. She’s sharp, quick, gorgeous, and easy to get along with. You’re determined to add her to your friendship roster and you mostly succeed, for all that she does her best to hold herself apart, chains of responsibility and past experience holding her tight. She restructures the classes for recruits, brings improvements to training in the rooms and yards, and joins Griff and Clay in their determination to find you someone to call compatible. She also does eventually join your roster of friends - and proves to be an absolute shark at card games, over and over again until she’s just part of the gang.

Second, Pat comes back, and Allegra doesn’t. Clint and Tara break the news to the three of you together, because Pat is the rockstar and they want to keep him, and you know they think you’re similar enough to Allegra that there’s a chance, or that he and Griffin will finally fully sync Griff away from his brothers. You all murmur the impossibility to each other as you set up an apartment for him (down the hall from yours, not far from Clayton, Pat isn’t catatonic like Clay was but Justin says he walks around like a ghost and if Pat needs you to do this for him, you’re there). When Pat arrives and you embrace him you realize Justin was understating the truth - Pat’s cold, doesn’t hug back, doesn’t flinch, won’t meet your eyes. Tara sets him up a test drift with Griffin and the hysteria in Griff’s eyes when you visit the infirmary says it all, you try your best yourself but while you can make contact it’s hazy, it’s enough to move but not enough to fly. Griffin gives up but you won’t, you can’t, especially not once the third change comes.

A new class of recruits arrives and there’s something magnetic about one of the girls. She has a crazy short brown haircut and amazing fashion sense, she’s close to your age (brought in by the desire to meet and train with Tara), and you wonder if this time this is what love feels like, as you watch Jenna from afar and try not to stare as she kicks ass the whole way through her classes. Jenna acts starstruck to meet Clayton, though, and that’s it, you’re gone on this young woman who idolizes your best friend the way he’s meant to be idolized while clearly not trying to just sleep with him and you beg Tara to let you test with her. Tara does that thing she does with her eyebrow that makes you feel so small but she agrees. You test compatible and Jenna’s excitement is infectious, and while you can’t be truly friends with a pre-graduate recruit you start having meals together, hanging out, and you even invite Jenna to your parties occasionally (she never comes, she knows what boundaries are so you don’t have to). You do hang out at your place sometimes, though, baking macaroons or watching horror movies, drinking wine and telling stories, and it’s you who get to be surprised for once when Jenna kisses you, gently, on her way out the night before you’re due to try to drift together for the first time. 

All your secrets lay themselves bare for Jenna, for this beautiful woman you’ve come to love as your minds collapse together and your skin sinks into a heavy heat. She looks at you, incapable of romance but full of so many loves, no memories before Clayton but so many after, losing your virginity to Pat in his single bed, barely graduating due to an inability to get piloting, your own adult’s bed full of visiting rangers night after night to distract yourself from the cold, and you feel wrapped in Jenna’s mind anyway, she doesn’t think you’re damaged goods, she wants you anyway. When you come out of the drift you pull Jenna to you, pressing her body into yours hungrily, like a woman possessed, full of a need and a desire and a love you don’t remember feeling ever before, and you both retreat to your quarters where you let the aphrodisiac of that first drift take control for the whole sleepless night that you touch every inch of Jenna’s beautiful glowing skin, let the chemicals pull you even deeper into her world - let it consume you, let her consume you until you’re crying, lost, hopeless in a world that’s just sensation and good and please and everything falls apart, and you remember nothing more.

There’s no right word to describe your relationship with Jenna, where it goes once she graduates. You’re drift partners but you don’t run that often, since you’re a teacher and Jenna’s thinking about becoming a medic. Girlfriend feels childish, lover too simple, best friend already reserved for Clayton and that won’t change. Eventually you both settle on partner, suggested by Pat one night in a rare moment where he actually engages, hears and responds to the conversation around him. It’s the same night Clay talks Pat into, if he isn’t going to train and isn’t going to run (there’s no can’t, you don’t remind Pat what he can’t do anymore, just like with Clayton it’s choice and not ability), why not pick something else to do? It’s not instant but you do hear one day that Pat sought out Clint, and, well, Pat turns out to be as great a combat instructor as he was a pilot, so nobody has anything else to say on the matter. Until.

You find out from Jonah, who begs you to take up the case to bring Brian home, and of course you say yes, of course you bring it up to Tara (in her office, through proper channels and everything) and she calls in Griffin for a second opinion. Griff surprises you by arguing against, at first, but you have a plan. If Brian still has any of the spark, the humor, the heart that made him infuriatingly wonderful to spend time with as a mentee, if that energy is still there despite his loss - it has to be - then Brian is what you need to draw Pat back out of his shell. They have the same sense of humor and you know Pat’s is still in there, just, hidden in the fog, it’s the perfect plan. Clayton likes the plan (because it’s a good fucking plan) and Griffin, whose approval wasn’t needed anyway, eventually approves. Brian’s coming home and this time you and Jonah are the ones to set up the apartment before Jonah leaves for Laura’s funeral.

Brian and Jenna become fast friends once he arrives. That admittedly wasn’t part of your plan but you can’t say it isn’t a nice side benefit? To actually enact the main part of your plan, you bother Pat into showing up to the same parties and events as Brian, but they never meet and never talk and it’s absolutely infuriating (Jenna finds your frustration cute, which, also, side benefit). It’s your genius best friend who finally gives you the idea to throw a big party, mostly with people Brian doesn’t know, make it overwhelming enough to defeat even Brian, and put Pat on Mario Kart duty. This works, as all Clayton plans do, and you’re rewarded with the hint of a smile across Pat’s face when you glance over, after introductions are made and their worlds shrink to just trying to beat each other in kart racing. Perfect, you think, now they’ll start hanging out, but of course they don’t. Men.

You let Tara in on the plan out of desperation, and she contributes the best tactic of all: when Brian resumes his pilot’s training, he goes into Patrick’s class. The first time you see them sitting together at lunch you almost scream and run to Tara’s office to hug her, and the first time you hear Pat’s laughter ringing out across the mess in years you start to cry. Your plan is working. It has bumps, but it’s working, you’re making progress, you’re getting to Pat. The newest bump in your plan is the day Brian and Clayton make drift contact, though. Nobody was expecting that and it even throws Tara for a loop. You interrogate Clay about it late that night, far away from Brian resting his head on Pat’s shoulder, Jenna hanging off of yours, and Clay truly doesn’t want to pilot anymore, the intimacy of hitting drift with Brian scared him enough to startle both of them out of it quickly. He says, maybe he could get used to it again, but it’s not what he wants, he likes teaching, and Tara frowns a little when you mention it the next day but you think nothing of it. Clayton does, however, pass on that based on what he saw your plan has even more merit than you thought, that he thinks Pat could be compatible for Brian, and you hadn’t even thought that far but your mind explodes with new plans, if true this could be huge. Bri’s the one who forces you into motion, though, mentioning one night much later that he thinks Tara is planning to pair him and Clay for runs if he doesn’t find someone else and suddenly the frown makes sense. You have to act; you can’t let them force brilliant shy Clayton into anything he doesn’t want. You need to get Brian and Pat to do a drift without telling Pat it’s what you want - and for that, you need Griffin.

In all honestly you miss Griffin. He’d invited you and Jenna to his wedding, where he and Rachel proved to be an incredibly cute couple, but he doesn’t really talk to anyone outside Rachel, Tara, and his brothers much anymore. Brian has become Griff’s successor in crazy eyes and weird statements and bright smiles, but Brian’s a kid and you grew up with Griff, you bonded, you miss him. Griffin’s become so reclusive that it takes you a few days to engineer a meeting with him in the halls, to get him to come with you so you can explain your plan. You have to show him that Pat’s gotten better, he doesn’t even believe you at first (rude) but once he hears Pat laughing with his own ears Griffin is on board with the plan to get Pat and Bri to fight and hopefully to drift. Nobody else realizes (well, Jenna does, but you tell her) but the plan also kind of relies on neither Brian nor Pat resisting it. If they decide they aren’t going to open up and give each other a try, if their minds remain closed to each other, it won’t work. You did a lot of talking to Brian and watching them interact before getting Griff on board so you think it’ll go fine, but you’re nervous nonetheless. If this fails, well, it can’t fail.

The day comes. You make plans with Griff and Clay to be there, in one of the observation rooms above Pat’s training room, and though you don’t tell Tara in anything as obvious as words it’s clear she knows you’re up to something (you later learn that she went to Jenna as a secondary source, and then books an observation room of her own with Jenna and Rachel and nobody tells you, the sneaks). Your eyes flick from Brian to Pat to Brian again, over and over, all your hopes hung on the two boys below you to the point you almost miss Brian’s glance in your direction and the way his smile changes (Clay calls it out, of course he notices too, and the anticipation in the room only grows) and you think, you don’t know but you think, it’s the proof you need that Bri is here for this as much as you are. You don’t really, there’s nothing scientific in the observation room to tell you when their minds meet, but you know anyway, you know Pat, you’ve watched his face in every intimate moment before and you recognize this, you know the way his eyes go dark and his teeth are bared like that, you recognize yourself in the flush of Brian’s skin and judging by the screaming Clay and Griff recognize it too. You’re captured in the three-way hug of best friends seeing their fourth find his place again, and then Griff is running and you’re following and Jenna’s there already to catch you in her arms, your own safe harbor in the uncertain sea of the world. In the end, it’s this. Surrounded by your friends, your partner, your only family that ever mattered, all celebrating - this is what love feels like.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm on tumblr @polyside complaining about how writing is hard.
> 
> I'm turning on comment moderation this time because I'm specifically soliciting future inspiration for this 'verse and would love to get as much of it as possible. If you want your comment kept private, let me know!


End file.
